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Nope (

nope) wrote,
@ 2008-09-19 19:45:00

20 Facts About Scorpius Malfoy (HP, 1400 words, G)
Title: 20 Facts About Scorpius Malfoy
Rating: G
Word Count: 1400 words
A/N: Written for the Harry Potter Random Facts Fest.

20 Facts About Scorpius Malfoy

The long-awaited Malfoy pride-and-heir was born during morning tea on the first of August, 2006, a bright summer's day; he was a large, healthy baby, with a full head of hair and an impressive set of lungs.
Draco, jittering with nervous exhaustion after sixteen hours of labour, cackled with manic triumph on being informed the child was male and promptly passed out. Asteria, in a haze of pain and potions, calmly named the boy Fungelbean Urgleturp Malloy before doing likewise. It took them three weeks, six hundred galleons, and Blaise Zabini finally sneaking into the Hall of Records to hand-alter files before Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy was properly and legally named. The Malfoys insisted the entire affair was never mentioned.
For the first few days at Malfoy Manor, Scorpius spent much of his waking moments screaming so loudly the windows rattled; thereafter, he proved to be an inordinately happy child. Draco denied using cheering charms to avoid dealing with screams and crying. Asteria insisted she would never allow calming draughts to be given to an infant, however well diluted in milk they may be. Both assumed the other was lying.
Scorpius proved to be a garrulous child, fond of getting dirty, to the constant consternation of his parents, the distaste of his grandfather, and the amusement of his grandmother, who secretly encouraged such enterprises. Narcissa liked hearing laughter about the place, although not so much when her rose-bushes were torn up because Teddy had taught Scorpius about pirates and they were looking for treasure.
As soon as Scorpius could toddle, he spent much of his time gurgling happily and chasing the peacocks all over the lawns, something he stubbornly persisted in despite his parents admonitions and the birds' tendency to peck. Asteria insisted Scorpius didn't get this from her. After the first time, Draco knew better than to argue.
When the kids played Dumbledore versus Grindelwald - their parents refused to let them play Potter versus the Dark Lord - Scorpius always took the latter part, speechifying in a terrible accent and 'dying' in increasingly melodramatic ways as the game went on. Draco huffily insisted Scorpius could not possibly have gotten this from him. Asteria smirked into her tea while Pansy laughed and Theo encouraged Scorpius to go again.
"I don't know where he gets it from," was something Scorpius heard a great deal. He was five before he worked out that the adults didn't actually want answers like 'I found it in the pond' or 'I was playing on Great-Grandpa Cygnus's tomb', even - indeed especially - when he had or he was.
They certainly didn't want to hear his explanation of how he ended up with Mrs Nott's hat pulled down so tightly that he would have choked to death had he not drawn attention by staggering blindly into a rather expensive Tibetan gong once belonging to Phineas Black. He was rather put out that no one believed the hat had leapt out and attacked him while he was innocently passing the hat-rack on his training broom, even though it did.
Scorpius had almost forgotten this incident until Teddy Lupin told him that Voldemort's soul was kept in Rowena Ravenclaw's hat; it was only the timely intervention of Andromeda that prevented Malfoy Manor being consumed in the blaze that took Asteria's hat collection. His parents went back and forth between congratulating him on his first major magic and punishing him for the fire so fast it almost gave him whiplash; certainly it left him very confused and with a lifelong distrust of hats.
Consequently, while many new pupils were apprehensive, Scorpius needed to be literally dragged to the stool for his sorting. Hats, he insisted to no avail, should definitely not talk. He held his breath the entire time it was on his head; it had trouble getting a word in edgeways between the threats of fire and the pleas not to eat him; the strangled gasp he let out on being sorted into Hufflepuff was less shock and more incipient asphyxiation.
A number of people blamed the Malfoys for Voldemort's rise. A number of generally unrelated people blamed the Malfoys for Voldemort's fall. Unsurprisingly, a large number of people (with joyful ill-will and vicious enthusiasm) expected Scorpius to be regaled with the mother of all howlers and pulled out of the school entirely. Scorpius laughed in surprise when his new housemates brought it up. He hadn't even considered the idea. Family was everything.
It also never occurred to Scorpius that people wouldn't want to be friends with him so he generally failed to notice their standoffishness which, at any rate, often collapsed under the constant battery of his cheer and geniality like cliffs before the ocean - or mounds of earth before a badger.
Although once in a while what it collapsed into was a cold hard core of hate. Scorpius had been raised with a number of often contradicting views on the subject of blood purity from his parents, grandparents, great-aunt, cousins, the family portraits, friends, books, newspapers, and the occasional stranger in the street. People often took his questions as insulting instead of genuinely naive and confused and, since Scorpius never really learned when to let things go, conversations went bad. Fortunately, there was usually someone around to step in; Hufflepuffs took care of their own, even when they were being idiots.
The Hufflepuff common room was bright and joyful, lined with yellow hangings and big, plush armchairs. The dorm room was a wood-panelled cave, warm and softly-lit and cosy. The two were connected by tunnels capped off with perfectly round doors, each with its own brass knocker in the shape of a leafy wreath. Scorpius thought the whole thing was brilliant, enthusing to anyone who would listen, most of who smiled and said, "we know, we live here too" which Scorpius thought was also brilliant.
Behaviour like this often led people to assume Scorpius was rather simple. He wasn't particularly cunning, or sneaky - for one thing, it was always blatantly obvious when he was lying - and he approached everything by linear, methodical plodding. In practice, he was generally in the top five of all his classes; his family had always insisted Malfoys could do anything they put their minds to - even if generally they didn't mean he should do so by being patient, stubborn, and hard-working - and Scorpius had taken the lesson to heart.
Also, he liked to explain things to people, which worked out well for those who preferred their history to be recounted with actions and silly voices instead of a ghostly monotone. The impromptu recounting of the taking of Undergold during the thirteenth goblin rebellion broke an armchair, two lamps and his wrist, earning Scorpius both two months detention and a tryout for assistant Quidditch commentator. A good idea in theory, in practice it merely added recounting Quidditch games to his repertoire - complete with actions and silly voices.
Scorpius was actually a rather good mimic even if silly voices were more fun, a talent fostered by Teddy Lupin and encouraged by those around him, because even Hufflepuffs weren't above the occasional prank and, besides, the impression of the Baron did help to keep Peeves at bay.
This talent turned out to be surprisingly useful the time Scorpius ended up helping the Potters and their friends to save the world; this, and Phineas Black's Tibetan gong. Draco and Asteria came to the Headmistress's office afterwards to insist they didn't know where Scorpius got it from, even though, as he tried to explain, it had been in the front passage of Malfoy Manor for eight years.
They were the talk of the school for a few days - mostly because of Scorpius's full recounting, with actions and voices, on the table in the Great Hall - before lessons and homework reasserted themselves. Afterwards, they didn't talk about it much, except for Scorpius to say, in disgusted tones, "I had to wear a hat!" and Albus to mumble about it being a coronet, which wasn't technically a hat at all, actually. There were always other more interesting things going on, and Scorpius was not one to rest on his laurels, even gold ones interlocked to form an ancient mystical Hufflepuffian artefact.
And every year, on a bright, warm, summer's day, Scorpius received a birthday card from Blaise Zabini addressed to Fungelbean Urgleturp Malloy; and every year, his parents refused to explain why.

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